Olivia Bryant
About
Olivia Bryant (b. 1996 in London, UK) received her BA (First-Class Honours) at Camberwell College of Arts in 2018 and is currently an MA candidate at the Royal College of Art in London. Her thesis, examining unfinishedness – or the 'non-finito' artwork – in relation to entropy, mortality and infinity, received a distinction in 2022. Bryant is the co-founder of the newsletter, God Save the Scene, a digital platform profiling London’s emerging art scene.
Statement
Bryant's practice revolves around several persistent themes: impermanence, fragility, temporality, animal labour, and power within anthropocene. The work straddles liminal spaces – between drawing and sculpture, between the online world and the physical world, between present-day anxieties and the uncertainty of the future. Much of the work employs unique techniques involving 3D printed matter, using bioplastics forged from recycling industries to create large-scale drawings and collages.
'E Conchis Omnia'
The sculpture was born of a nightmare about something as large as a skyscraper confronting something as tiny as a pin. Resembling a crab claw, or the skeleton of an ouroboros – the ancient symbol of serpent consuming its own tail – this 3D printed lobster clasp and chain gets smaller and smaller, each piece made from a slightly different off-white plastic. When gradually scaled up, a link represents something different industrially: from jewellery to transport, while as a whole, the ultimate purpose of a chain is to transmit power.
Medium: 3D printed resin, HDPE, PLA, Mussel shell PLA
Size: dimensions variable
Mineral
Mineral
This work has been made in collaboration with non-human animals – I commissioned a herd of cows to fabricate a sculpture for me. The sculptural shapes produced come from the licking of mineral blocks, and speak to their unknown labour and quiet desires. In February I placed five salt blocks in the roundhouse of a farm in Suffolk, and collected them in May – pausing the sculpture at a specific aesthetic point is my role in the collaborative process.
Medium: Salt, string
Size: dimensions variable
Shein
Shein
A diptych of hand-drawn 3D printed lace curtains, the image taken from the fast fashion website Shein. Drawn in bioplastics, this work employs the crushed bodies of living organisms repurposed into an art material.
Medium: Wood, beer, coffee, wheat, oyster shell, mussel shell and scallop shell PLA on linen
Size: 200 x 110cm each
Lace for Late August
Medium: PLA on cotton canvas
Size: 170 x 120cm
Dowsing
Medium: PLA on cotton canvas, horseshoe cast in sea kelp and plaster
Size: 170 x 120cm